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For simplicity, this article presents examples in plain informal and non-literary style. The reader must keep the general grammatical principles of politeness and respect in mind.
Text (文章 bunsho) is composed of sentences (文 bun), which are in turn composed of phrases (文節 bunsetsu), which are its smallest coherent components. Like Chinese and classical Korean, written Japanese does not typically demarcate words with spaces; its agglutinative nature further makes the concept of a word rather different from words in English. Word divisions are informed by semantic cues and a knowledge of phrase structure. Phrases have a single meaning-bearing word, followed by a string of suffixes, auxiliary verbs and particles to modify its meaning and designate its grammatical role. In the following example, bunsetsu are indicated by vertical bars:
Some scholars romanize Japanese sentences by inserting spaces only at phrase boundaries (i.e., "taiyouga higashino sorani noboru"), in effect treating an entire phrase as the equivalent of an English word. Traditionally, however, a more basic concept of word (単語 tango) forms the atoms of sentences. Words unlike phrases need not have intrinsic meaning, therefore admitting particles and auxiliary verbs. It must be noted that this classification of textual structure in modern Japanese is descriptive; some classical auxiliary verbs such as -te are grammaticalized as conjugations or verb endings in modern Japanese, not individual words.
The structure of this article will mirror the following classification of words. There are two broad categories — independent words (自立語 jiritsugo) having internal meaning, and ancillary words (付属語 fuzokugo) which are meaning modifiers. Independent words divide into a conjugable (活用語 katsuyogo) class containing verbs (動詞 doushi), pure adjectives (形容詞 keiyoshi, also known as i-type adjective), and adjectival nouns (形容動詞 keiyodoshi, also known as na-type adjective); and a non-conjugable (無活用語 mukatsuyogo) class containing nouns (名詞 meishi), pronouns (代名詞 daimeishi), adverbs (副詞 fukushi), conjunctions (接続詞 setsuzokushi), and interjections (感動し kandoshi). Of ancillary words there are only two classes: grammatical particles (助詞 joshi) and auxiliary verbs (助動詞 jodoshi).
| meaning | plain | respectful |
|---|---|---|
| rice | 飯 meshi | ご飯 go-han |
| money | 金 kane | お金 o-kane |
| body | 体 karada | お体 o-karada 御体 onmi |
| word(s) | 言葉 kotoba | お言葉 o-kotoba 詔 mikotonori |
Japanese nouns are non- inflecting, have no gender, and take no articles. Thus 猫 (neko) could be translated into English as "cat", "a cat", "the cat", "cats", "some cats", or "the cats", depending on context. A small number of nouns have plurals formed by reduplication (possibly accompanied by rendaku): thus 人 hito "person" and 人々 hitobito "people", although these are typically collective rather than true plurals. Additionally, in respectful speech, the prefix o- is often used with native nouns, as is the prefix go- with Sino-Japanese nouns. Some common nouns have unpredictable respectful forms; a few examples are in the adjoining table.
The use of pronouns in Japanese is rare, limited to when the referrent cannot be deduced from the context. For example, 日本に行きました (nihon ni ikimashita) says just "went to Japan". The subject is inferred from context: if the topic is the first person, then it means "I went to Japan", for a third person, "he/she went to Japan", etc. Speakers of Japanese tend to use names instead of pronouns in speech. For example:
Japanese has many nouns that can be used as personal pronouns; see [1] for a long list. Some common ones are given in the following table.
| person | plain, informal | polite | respectful |
|---|---|---|---|
| first | 僕 (boku, male), 俺 (ore, male, very informal) あたし (atashi, female) | 私 (watashi) | 私 (watakushi) |
| second | 君 (kimi, usu. used by males) | 貴方 (anata), そちら (sochira) | お宅 (o-taku) |
| third | 彼 (kare, male) 彼女 (kanojo, female) | あの人 (ano hito) | |
Although Japanese nouns do not inflect for number, there are "plural" forms to indicate semantic number: 私達 (watashi-tachi) for "we", あなたたち (anata-tachi) for "you (plural)", 僕等 (bokura) for "we (inform. male)". Interestingly, one uncommon pseudopronoun, 我 (ware, "I") has a much more common reduplicative plural 我々 (wareware, "we"). However, 達 (-tachi) and 等 (-ra) are by far the most common pluralizing suffixes -- although 達 (-tachi) is not strictly a pluralizing suffix: for example, 太郎達 (Taro-tachi) does not mean "some number of people named Taro" but instead means "Taro and his friends," or "Taro and those people who are with him". The suffixes ス (-su) and ズ (-zu), derived from the English plural suffix -[e]s, are also occasionally used to indicate the plural, although this is not even remotely standard Japanese.
Whereas in English there are many reflexive pronouns (himself, herself, itself, themselves, etc.), in Japanese there is a single reflexive pronoun 自分 (jibun). The uses of the reflexive pronoun in the two languages are very different. The following incorrect literal translations demonstrate the differences (*=impossible, ??=ambiguous):
| English | Japanese | reason |
|---|---|---|
| History repeats itself. | *歴史は自分を繰り返す。 *Rekishi wa jibun wo kurikaesu. | the target of jibun must be animate |
| ??John talked to Bill about himself. | ジョンはビルに自分のことを話した。 Jon ga Biru ni jibun no koto wo hanashita. John talked to Bill about himself (=John) | jibun refers unambiguously to the subject. |
| *John expects that Mary will take good care of himself. | ??ジョンはメリーが自分を大事にすることを期待している。 ??Jon wa Meri ga jibun wo daiji ni suru koto wo kitaishite iru. either "John expects that Mary will take good care of him", or "John expects that Mary will take good care of herself." | jibun can be in a different sentence or dependent clause, but its target is ambiguous |
If the sentence has more than one grammatical or semantic subject, then the target is the subject of the main action; thus in the following sentence 自分 (jibun) refers unambiguously to Mary (even though John is the grammatical subject) because the main action is "Mary's reading".
In practice the main action is not always discernible, in which case such sentences are ambiguous. The use of jibun in complex sentences follows non-trivial rules.
| ko- | so- | a- | do- |
|---|---|---|---|
| kore this one | sore that one | are that one over there | dore which one? |
| kono (of) this | sono (of) that | ano (of) that over there | dono (of) what? |
| konna like this | sonna like that | anna like that over there | donna how? what sort of? |
| koko here | soko there | asoko * over there | doko where? |
| kochira this way | sochira that way | achira that way over there | dochira which way? |
| ko in this manner | so in that manner | ā * in that (other) manner | do in what manner? |
| koitsu this fellow | soitsu that fellow | aitsu that other fellow | doitsu which fellow? |
Demonstratives limit, and therefore precede, nouns; thus この本 (kono hon) for "this/my book", and その本 (sono hon) for "that/your book".
When demonstratives are used to refer to things not visible to the speaker or the hearer, or to (abstract) concepts, they fulfill a related but different anaphoric role. The anaphoric so- series is used to refer to experience that is not shared between the speaker and the listener, generally because one party has no information about it. For shared information the anaphoric a- series is used.
Soko instead of asoko would imply that B has no knowledge of Sapporo, which is inconsistent with the rest of the sentence.
Again, ano is inappropriate here because Sato doesn't (didn't) know Tanaka personally.
The ko- series demonstratives don't have clear anaphoric uses. They can be used in situations where the a- series sound too disconnected: